Influence of Alkali Pre-Treatment on Properties Of Watermelon Peels Briquettes

Abstract

Urbanization has significantly increased the rate of waste generation as well mount pressure on the available resources for continual existence of human on planet earth. This therefore necessitated the conversion of agricultural wastes to usable form. This study is aimed to investigate the influence of alkali pre-treatment on briquettes produced from watermelon peels. The macerated starch-bonded watermelon peel (MSWP) and unmacerated starch-bonded watermelon peel (USWP) samples were molded and analyzed. Proximate analysis, FourierTransform Infrared (FTIR) analysis, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Calorific values, density and compressive strength, among other properties, were determined for the fabricated briquettes. The recorded calorific values of both MSWP and USWP were 22.43±0.14MJ/Kg and 13.45±0.1 MJ/Kg respectively at p < 0.05. While the volatile matter values were 59.98±0.19 and 67.01±0.32 for MSWP and USWP respectively. It took USWP approximately 15.14 minutes to boil 1000 cm3 of water, while MSWP boiled same quantity of water in 11.219 minutes. Both FTIR and SEM show a morphological restructuring with C-O vibrational stretch of 1037 cm-1 in USWP and at 1019 cm-1 for mercerized MSWP. The finding of this study shows that both the alkali-treated and untreated water melon peel can be used for fuel briquette production. However mercerization improves the combustion property when compared to the untreated briquette samples.